Anja had chalk on her cheek and no idea it was there.
She stood beneath the upper staging apron with a measuring cord stretched between two fixed points. Neri watched from the inner seat while a fitter read the sag against the marked board. Above them, people walked toward lanes seven and eight, the sound of their feet passing through the framing in separate, ordinary knocks.
Iven stopped at the inspection line.
“Can I come through?”
“Under the inner side,” Neri said. “Not across Anja’s cord.”
He stepped where she pointed and set Harl’s borrowed spanner on the tool cloth.
Neri saw the empty place where his belt should have been.
“Dain?”
